


this thing is going to kill you

by Princex_N



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Isolation, Season/Series 03, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:02:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23605744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: alonealonealone
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	this thing is going to kill you

The solitude smothers. 

It serves a purpose, he knows. Hiding where the liars cannot find him, where he cannot push the spread of the thick miasma that threatens to choke whenever he stays in one place for too long. He knows. 

This does not make it easier to deal with. 

Brian used to have friends, he used to be good with people. He enjoyed their company, excelled at getting to know them and getting them to like him. He had friends, several of them, and he loved them all. But they were torn from him, and he from them, and there is nothing safe left to fill the gaping wounds in the sides of his head. The silence presses in at the base of his throat. He cannot remember the last time he spoke. 

The silence was not always his to bear alone, even after the majority had been gone, there was still the other, the two of them the twins. Not anymore, and Brian doesn't know if it's a loss or a betrayal but either way he is alone alone alone and doesn't know what to do with it. If it was safe, he sometimes thinks he would scream just to hear a noise that isn't the quiet static of wind in the trees or birds in the branches. He hates the silence, the pressure of it against his eardrums, the loneliness, the ache under his skin that grows and grows with every week that passes. 

Sometimes he gets too close to the others just to risk it, to hear the sounds of their voices when they chase him, to chance the potential that they might one day catch him. 

("Wipe that stupid smile off your face," Alex had said, and Brian hates him hates him _hates him_ but he smiles because there is a fist grabbing his sweatshirt and his fingers are digging into someone else's wrist, the pleasure-pain of the impact where Alex's fist hit him, the smooth caress of the blood dripping from his nose, and it is _something_ even if Brian wants to reach out and strangle the one giving it all to him. Little gifts to tide him over, and Brian runs instead of snapping teeth because he hates him hates him _hates him_ but maybe it'll happen again. Maybe.) 

It isn't enough, Brian knows. There's an itch under his skin that marks him as inhuman now, but the need for others still lingers. He figures it's okay, it has to be, because there is no surviving longer than he needs to. It will be fine, or maybe it won't be, but Brian doesn't think he cares very strongly either way any longer. 

(Sometimes he watches Jay's entries, his updates, and _hates them_ even though he'd choose the two of them to emerge untouched if he could. Their footage is edited careful, anything personal kept from the public, but they are _together_ and Jay has what Brian no longer does, and he hates them as much as he wishes he could outgrow this role and join them. He knows this isn't an option. It does not stop the dreams from haunting him.) 

He thinks it might kill him, he thinks he might let it - too stubborn and locked in place to be gifted any other option. There is no respite for him, not anymore, no rest from the gnawing of hunger in his stomach or the thick ache of dehydration through his body or the burning _need_ under his skin that itches and itches in a way his nails can never reach - no matter how much blood he scrapes out. 

But no one pets a rabid dog - snarling and straining against its chains - and Brian knows that he's not any better. Violence is a gift that keeps giving, and he'll take their grabbing hands and shouting voices and sharp blows over the empty ache of seclusion whenever he can get them. 

This is as good as it gets, he knows, pressing his fingers into bruises and relishing the sensation alongside the burn of his muscles from when he had run from them. 

He thinks they might kill him, he thinks he might let them - he'll take what he can from them in the meantime. 

**Author's Note:**

> i may not be showing it 100,,, but being quarantined in isolation really be giving me brain damage
> 
> [my tumblr](http://www.princex-n.tumblr.com)


End file.
